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Sunday, August 31, 2008

Andy Pettitte was once a strong second half pitcher. He started out that way this year winning his first 2 games after the All-star break, but he's been garbage in his last 7 outings. With today's loss, Andy is now 1-4 in his last 7 outings. The Yankees as a team are 1-6. He pitched alright in a few of those outings but they don't come close to making up for the bad ones. And when he's bad, he's really bad. With Rasner, Ponson, and Pavano making up three-fifths of your rotation, you pretty much need Pettitte and Mike Mussina to pitch lights out baseball every time they start. Andy has been a let down. We need him to be better. Much much better.

The Jays jumped all over Andy early and you knew as soon as the first inning was over that this wasn't going to be the Yankees day. Roy Halladay has only allowed 5 runs or more in only 4 of his 28 starts. He's only allowed 4 runs in 5 starts. A 4-run deficit against Roy Halladay pretty much means you're going to lose. To Andy's credit he settled down and kept the Yankees in the game, but the deficit was too much to overcome. The offense has been blah all season and I had no reason to believe they were going to make a comeback.

I've stated a lot recently that if the Yankees wanted to reach the postseason by winning the wild card that they needed 94 wins. That's getting tougher and tougher by the day as the team keeps losing. The loss drops them to 72-64, which pretty much means they now need to go 22-4 the rest of the way. If anyone out there honestly thinks that's possible I'd love to hear why. I'm looking for reasons to believe, but when I think about it logically, I know there's no chance. If you throw out the first 8 games after the All-star break, the Yankees are 64-64, a 500 team. Pathetically average if you will. So for 94% of the played season, they've been a 500 ball club. I see no reason or signs that this team will all of the sudden flip the switch and run off 22 wins in 26 games. 16 of the last 26 games are on the road. They have to play in Boston, Tampa Bay, and in Anaheim. Those are the 3 best teams in the American League. Boston and Tampa are ridiculous at home, both winning over 70% of their home games. I don't know how I can expect the Yankees, who are 32-33 on the road, to win those games. I just don't see it happening. They've shown me nothing to make me think they can make a run. I want to believe they can, I really do. But like I said, there haven't been any signs to make me think they can. If someone can lay some reasons on me, please do. I'm really curious if there are any Yankee fans out there that believe they can pull this off. If anyone does, let me know.

Their "time of death" is rapidly approaching. 4 more losses and I'm calling it.